JOURNEY OUTSIDE THE CAMP

Spilling the gospel beans

In the past, I've been taught that a good Christian always strives to “spill the gospel beans” in every conversation with a non-Christian. In other words, every time I'm speaking with a non-Christian, I need to work an angle so that I can share the good news that Christ died for them. If I don't, I'm unloving and a bad Christian. After all, don't I care if the other person is saved?

While it is true that Christ came to re-establish a relationship between God and man by taking the just punishment that we deserve on himself, trying to shove that information down someone's throat will almost guarantee a rejection of the good news. The listener doesn't know where you're coming from. He isn't interested in your message and frankly, I will just look downright crazy if I did that in every conversation. My testimony would be weak.

And it's a lot of pressure trying to do this at every conversation! How then, can we be good gospel bearers?

1 Peter 3:15
...but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect...

Peter teaches us a few things in this verse. First is to be always prepared to make a defense. That means we need to be ready at any time to share the gospel message. As Christians, we need to be ready day or night, tired or fresh, in busyness or in leisure time, to explain the gospel clearly so that the one asking can understand the good news. We need to get trained on sharing accurately. (More about this in a later post.)

Secondly, Peter adds that we need to do this not with fire and brimstone but with gentleness and respect. In other words, there's no browbeating or cajoling. You have to speak lovingly but with conviction. And the key is the second word: respect.

This respect, I believe, goes both ways. I was just in a discussion with a missionary friend and he said this respect implies a relationship. And it implies trust. Think of street evangelism where you pounce on a stranger to share the gospel. It's doesn't have a high success rate. Why? Because you have no relationship with the other person, and as a result, there is lack of trust. Your message cannot be trusted.

But building trust through building a relationship makes the gospel message credible. As a follower of Christ, I am called to love others and loving others means to reach out and build good friendships with the people around me. (More on building friendships in a later post.)

When we are no longer strangers, my friend will be so much open to hearing about the hope that I have. When there is trust, people know you care about them and want the best for them. When you do have that relationship, they are willing to listen. In fact, they will ask you about the gospel. (More on how to open up a discussion that leads to a gospel sharing in a later post.)

We need to understand that it takes time, trust and respect in order to have someone be willing to hear the good news. You can’t rush to spill the gospel beans so to speak, because all you will be doing is talking into the wind and you’ve made the other person more gospel-resistant.

Can Christians eat food offered to ancestors or idols?

 

Paul wrote about a similar type of situation that was happening in the early church regarding eating meat that had been offered to idols. His instructions to the church on this and several broader topics are applicable to us here as well. Let us look at what he says to the Corinthian church.

1 Corinthians 8:1-13
[8:1] Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. [2] If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. [3] But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

[4] Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” [5] For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—[6] yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

[7] However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. [8] Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. [9] But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. [10] For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? [11] And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. [12] Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. [13] Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.

 

What Paul is saying is that food offered to idols (and ancestors) is fine to eat because the idols are actually not gods at all. Indeed, it is the real and only God Yahweh who has made all food for man (cf. Genesis 1:29 and Genesis 9:3). So in essence, there is nothing wrong with eating food that has been offered to ancestors or idols.

However, some believers, especially those with backgrounds in idol worship, are sensitive concerning this issue and consider it morally wrong to eat meat sacrificed to idols. So Paul is saying that under no circumstances should a believer (by eating foods offered to idols) cause another to violate his own conscience and fall into sin.

The higher principle that comes into play here is love. How so? We need to ask ourselves: "Will I stumble believers if I eat the food? Will they see me eat it and take a blow to their faith? Will they get shaken and start to take the glory of God too casually?" If there is any risk at all that this might happen, then out of love for the believer, I should not eat it, so that I will not cause another believer to stumble.

As a believer, we should maintain a pure testimony. This extends even to our testimony before unbelievers. If an unbeliever sounds out to you that a particular food has been offered to idols, thinking that you will refrain from eating it, then do not eat it. This unbeliever considers the food tainted by the idols whom you do not want to associate with. Eating it will put your beliefs and testimony in question in the mind of this unbelieving friend.

Therefore, even though there is nothing wrong with eating such food, but for the sake of our believing and unbelieving friends, their conscience and our pure testimony, we should refrain.

However, if our believing friends know there is nothing wrong with eating food offered to idols and our unbelieving friends also do not associate your eating of such food with the worship of the idols, then there is nothing wrong in eating the food.

Should Christians watch horror movies?

 

Before answering this question, it's good to remember that being a Christian is not about a list of dos and don'ts. We should not think that by refraining from certain things God will be pleased with us. He has already made us righteous through the blood of Jesus so we have nothing to "perform" to look right before God.

 

I'd like to start off by quoting from Romans 12:

Romans 12:1-2
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

 

The first question to ask here is why does Paul plant the word "therefore" at the start of verse 1? Well, the answer is that he just spent the first 11 chapters of Romans explaining pretty much the gospel: Man sinned and God chose to provide forgiveness through Jesus Christ. Man did not need to work for salvation nor could he earn it but Jesus willing did it for us. At great cost to himself, God showed his justice and his mercy through the crucifixion of Jesus. How righteous God is. How amazing his love for us.

THEREFORE... our response is to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Wait a minute! Jesus is the final lamb. What other sacrifice is needed? The answer: none. Paul is not asking for a sacrifice for sin. Paul is saying that not just our minds but our bodies (and what we do with them) belong to God and all that we say, do, think and act should go towards worshiping him because he has done so much for us. In other words, though our salvation was free, we now should spend our livers joyfully glorifying him.

This act of glorifying God is our life's joyful work. Every part of our lives should be used to make God look good. When we enjoy God and make him look good, we are happy.

Psalm 16:11
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

 

The psalmist here says that with God, there are pleasures forevermore. When we see the world through God's eyes, we become full of joy. We see the food that we eat as being created by him and provided by him. We become thankful and praise our Heavenly Father for the meal. We look at our health check up results and recognize how God is sustaining us and we praise him for his lovingkindness. When we watch a nature programme on TV and see the wonder of nature, we marvel at God's creative design and thank him for the amazing world he created for us. In other words, our whole life becomes worship. How we eat, what we say, how we dress, how we live and even... what we watch should be focused on glorifying God.

We can work in any given situation so that we enjoy God's fellowship through it and we can also help others see God's glory. Or we can take the same situation and become selfish and God-dishonoring and cause ourselves or others to stumble and the glory of God becomes smeared. For example, we can take a family dinner to celebrate a work promotion as an opportunity to thank God for being sovereign in the office and letting the family enjoy food that God has provided or we can talk about how hard we've worked and to earn the promotion that now allows the family to eat fancy meals. The first way honors God, the second is dishonoring. We can watch any movie or TV programme and afterward to reflect on the values in movie and see how those stack up (or not) against God's word. We can take the movie as a cautionary tale of what happens when pride gets in the way of forgiveness, etc. Or we can let the movie erode the moral compass that God is building in our lives, we can forget that God is sovereign and instead we absorb the worldview of the movie.

This leads us to the question of horror movies. The scriptural lens that I just described can help us make a decision on whether or not to watch any particular movie (not just horror). Take an example: Juno. I recently watched 30 minutes of it and couldn't stomach more. The values that the characters were expressing and the decisions they made were causing harm and hurt to everyone around them. I changed channels pretty quick. I felt that nothing in the movie was God-honoring so rather than filling my mind with it, I changed channels. Likewise with films about adultery and divorce or with films laden with sexual images, I avoid them because they are filling my mind with thoughts that rob me of my enjoyment of God. The so-called heroes of such films make poor choices and believe in God-dishonoring worldviews so we didn't want all of that filling our minds.

Now let's take a horror movie like Shaun of the Dead. It's a silly horror comedy. I wouldn't let my younger boys watch it because they would get nightmares so that would be foolish of me to let them view it. I myself might watch it and laugh and then forget about it. But if I know the movie would weaken my faith and cause me to falter, I would avoid it. These days with sites like IMDB, you can watch trailers and read reviews to decide if a movie is worth watching from a Biblical perspective. Sometimes, if there are characters in the movie that make poor choices, my wife and I would highlight that over dinner with the boys and talk about what we would do if we were in similar situations. That's one way to fight back on the worldly influences: shine the light of the gospel on the story.

In the past, I used to enjoy horor movies too. But in recent years, I find that there are other types of programmes that are enjoyable and help me to think of life from God's point of view. I have filled my mind and heart with such entertainment and I've lost the taste for horror movies.

Philippians 4:8
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

 

Rather than providing a yes/no answer to what appears to be a simple question, I wanted to demonstrate a framework that helps us make good decisions in our entertainment choices and to use those entertainment choices to show ourselves and our children, what God thinks of us and how we can live to honour him all the more.

Far as the Curse is Found by Michael D. Williams

 

 

It's taken me several months to read through Far as the Curse is Found by Michael D. Williams. Not that it's a hard book to read. Well, it's certainly not light reading but it was so engaging that I had to read it slowly and carefully. I had a hardcopy which I underlined as I went along and what a lot of lines there are now in the book.

Often, when one reads the Bible, it comes across as disjointed stories and a series of moral lessons. But Williams lovingly and very thoroughly shows the reader that the Bible, in all its Old and New Testament portions, is actually one continuous and unfolding story of covenantal redemption. What this means is that Yahweh, the sovereign Lord, made an agreement with man to save him from sin and restore man to a right relationship with God. And not just man but all of creation. And that part, the restoration of all creation, is not often touched upon in Bible studies. Williams emphasises that God's plan of redemption was for everything he had created. He wasn't just going to save man and dump the rest of creation. God means to save everything.

Worldview evangelism workshops in March 2012

GoodSeed, New Tribes Mission Singapore and TWR Asia are organising two workshops in Singapore. The workshops are aimed at helping believers explain the gospel clearly and simply without confusion. We often start by assuming too much of our listeners, or else starting in the middle of the story or we don't take the time to define words like faith, righteousness and holiness. The following two workshops help believers avoid pitfalls and provide tools to make the gospel message clear.

 

WORLDVIEW RETHINK

 

Place: New Life Baptist Church
Date: 17 March 2012
Time: 9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
Download the flyer

This is a one-day workshop aimed at helping us understand how a person's worldview affects the way he thinks and lives. We run the real risk of miscommunication in a multi-racial and multi-religious society if we don't consider the listener's worldview. So how do explain the gospel clearly? This workshop explains how to do it in 7 one-hour sessions.

 

 

TERM SEMINAR

 

Place: New Life Baptist Church
Date: 21 - 23 March 2012
Time: 9:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Cost: $80
Download the flyer

TERM is an acronym for The Emmaus Road Message. It was how Jesus explained the gospel to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus on Easter morning (Luke 24:13-25). The TERM seminar is a three-day seminar uniquely designed to train participants how to conduct worldview evangelism with neighbours, friends, colleagues and in Bible studies. The seminar goes by the principle of "as you are taught, so you will teach". Participants will be taught the material first and then trained on how to teach. Over 70 visual aids will be used to make the gospel message clearer.

Do take a look at the flyers. If you have any questions, send me a message on Twitter: @amsk.